Tykoon simulates a business firm. Your goal is find a combination of labor, capital, and price which results in a profit. Understanding a bit of economic theory helps a lot in achieving this goal, which is probably inevitable because the program was originally developed as an instructional tool.
Tykoon is a simulation of the sort of firm which exists in economics textbooks, which means that many of the real-world decisions a real firm must make do not exist.
The firm in the simulation is a monopoly with fixed production function and demand curve. You make three main decisions: hire labor, hire capital, and set price. Output is determined by your hiring, and the amount you sell by your price. You can also purchase information about productivity which will help you if you know what to do with it. The information you purchase contains marginal productivity data.
When you have done as well as you can with a firm, you can sell it. If you are making a profit, your score will be increased by an amount which depends on how close you come to the solution. You can then start with a new firm with new parameters. As the score increases, the difficulty in finding a profit also increases. A score of 100 should indicate either incredible luck or an understanding of the fundamentals of the economic theory of the firm.
It is always possible to make a profit. When the program sets up a firm, it randomly generates the production function and demand curve, and then checks to see if a profit is possible. If it is not, it adjusts its parameters until one is possible. You can discover the best solution by selling out or by going bankrupt.
Some History
The ancestor to this program was developed in the late 1970s on an old HP 2000 minicomputer with some funding from a NSF LOCI grant. It was part of a larger package of instructional material developed for use in introductory economics courses; most of the rest is long gone. In 1983 an instructional version of this program (called BIZNES) was published by CONDUIT of Iowa City, originally for the Apple II and later for DOS machines. In 1995 it was finally discontinued, and with all rights to the program reverting to me, I let the DOS version go out of print and wrote a Macintosh version called MacBIZNES. The student manual to MacBIZNES contains a complete description of the theory in Tykoon, and is also available as shareware.
In the early 1980s, for reasons I no longer remember, I rewrote this instructional program as a game for the TI-4A home computer right before it went out of production and the market for its software dried up faster than water on Mercury. A few years later I tried to learn to program on DOS machines by converting it to GW-BASIC, and in the process I decided that I did not want to work in that environment. That version never left my office. A couple of years ago, after beginning to program on the Mac, I contacted CONDUIT and asked if they would be interested in a Macintosh version of Biznes. They said, "No," and gave me permission to do whatever I wanted with the program on the Mac.
In the summer of either 1992 or 1993 I purchased a copy of PG-PRO by Staz Software and needed something to practice on. I found my old source code mentioned above, and converted it to FutureBASIC. I had intended to add more features to this program, but opportunity knocked and the value of mine time unexpectly rose . That rise priced this program off my schedule.
This version works, but is lean. Its user-friendliness leaves a lot to be desired. Is it worth spending more time on it? I do not know. If you see any value to it, I would like to hear from you. I only work on things where there is some interest.
Distribution
Tykoon is copyright 1993-96 by Robert Schenk. This program is shareware--see the instructions on paying below.
If you have any comments or suggestions, I can be reached at
bobs@kagi.com. (This is an internet address.)
Robert Schenk
July 1993, amended 1995
****************
notes on revision of late 1994
It took a year, but someone finally noticed a bug in the original version of MacTykoon. When one purchased help, the effect on net worth was erratic.
The bug was caused by a stupid typo on my part. I think I have corrected it. Since I had to go in and make the change, I spent a bit more time and added a new feature. One can now see the results of the last 100 decisions. I had meant to do add this when I was working on it, but it seemed difficult. As the result of several program I have written since then, the addition was quite simple.
The change is significant enough that I feel an increase to version 1.1 is warrented.
I hope I have not introduced any more bugs into the program. I welcome suggestions for alterations to make the program more useful or entertaining. Please give me feedback on this program.
Robert Schenk
bobs@kagi.com
December, 1994
Version 1.1.3 corrects still a bug which occurred when a very high price was entered. April 1996
How to Pay the Shareware fee of $10
Paying for MacTykoon is fairly simple. Open the Register program that comes with it. Enter your name, your email address, and the number of single user licenses you desire for each program you wish to purchase (or Site or Word-Wide licenses). Save or Copy or Print the data from the Register program and send the data and payment to Kagi Shareware. More specifics on the Register program to follow. Kagi Shareware handles my payment processing.
If paying with Credit Card or First Virtual, you can email or fax the data to Kagi Shareware. Their e-mail address is shareware@kagi.com and their fax number is +1 510 652-6589. You can either Copy the data from Register and paste into the body of an e-mail message or you can Save the data to a file and you can attach that file to an email message. There is no need to compress the data file, it's already pretty small. If you have a fax modem, just Print the data to the Kagi fax number.
Payments sent via email are processed within 3 to 4 days. You will receive an email acknowledgement when it is processed. Payments sent via fax take up to 10 days and if you provide a correct internet email address you will receive an email acknowledgement.
If you are paying with Cash or USD Check you should print the data using the Register application and send it to the address shown on the form, which is:
Kagi Shareware
1442-A Walnut Street #392-SB
Berkeley, California 94709-1405
USA
You can pay with a wide variety of cash from different countries but at present if you pay via check, it must be a check drawn in US Dollars. Kagi Shareware cannot accept checks in other currencies, the conversion rate for non-USD checks is around USD 15 per check and that is just not practical. If you have a purchasing department, you can enter all the data into the Register program and then select Invoice as your payment method. Print three copies of the form and send it to your accounts payable people. You might want to highlight the line that mentions that they must include a copy of the form with their payment.
Kagi Shareware can not invoice your company, you need to act on my behalf and generate the invoice and handle all the paperwork on your end.
Please do not fax or email payment forms that indicate Cash, Check or Invoice as the payment method. As far as we know, there is still no technology to transfer physical objects via fax or email and without the payment, the form cannot be processed. Payments send via postal mail take time to reach Kagi Shareware and then up to 10 days for processing. Again, if you include a correct email address, you will hear from Kagi Shareware when the form is processed.
